Amid ongoing protests in the city of Chicago, an Illinois state legislator who introduced a bill that would allow Rahm Emanuel to be removed from office by a recall vote says city residents feel abandoned by the embattled mayor.

“We have not seen the tip of the iceberg yet,” Rep. La Shawn Ford said on Thursday, saying voters had lost “trust and confidence” in the mayor.

Guards at the Los Angeles County jail complex in Castaic will start using a newfangled weapon that produces a deep burning sensation — which is not to be confused with a “warm fuzzy feeling” — in whomever it is aimed at.

One more reason Rahm Emmanuel should be removed as mayor, and turned over to the Cook County Correctional System for rehabilitation of his corrupt dealings, strong-arm tactics, and blatant lying under oath.

During the most tumultuous 11-day span of his tenure as Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel has gone from backing his police chief, defending the city’s investigation of police shootings and resisting a federal civil rights investigation of his police department to abruptly backtracking on all three positions.

The mayor, who hours before releasing the Laquan McDonald video said that he had asked the “hard questions” and insisted safeguards for police shootings were in place, now says the Chicago Police Department needs “nothing less than complete and total reform.”

The arc of the mayor’s evolving stances since a judge forced him to release the graphic police video of an African-American teenager being gunned down in the street by a white officer reflects how Emanuel and his aides underestimated the scope of the fallout, from stinging national criticism to local protests calling on him to resign.

The weight of Emanuel’s biggest scandal to date has left the usually decisive politician continuously recalibrating his response to the crisis as new information about the case becomes public and pressure for an independent investigation increases. The mayor also faces the challenge of trying to square his police department’s long-standing problems with his penchant for downplaying problems and rebutting criticisms with speeches, statistics and press releases claiming improvements on whatever issue is at hand. Continue reading Rahm’s backtracking to cover his corrupt self.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday sought to deflect criticism about his $20 million campaign fund stocked with six-figure contributions from wealthy Republican donors by highlighting the support he’s received from several unions.The mayor joined members of a union representing hospitality workers to watch a series of new “Rahm Love” TV ads the union has started to air.

The event, held at the union’s Loop office, came as Emanuel has continued to collect large campaign contributions. During a single day last week, the mayor reported raising $1.2 million, and this month Republican billionaire Ken Griffin gave $500,000 to an Emanuel-aligned super political action committee that has been airing attack ads against challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

Emanuel has raised more than $20 million compared with about $3.2 million for Garcia, who has suggested the mayor is trying to buy the election. Garcia frequently references a Beatles song when taking shots at the mayor’s fundraising, saying, “Money can’t buy you love.”

There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.”

The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government … any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order, it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand — not only on the terms of the deal, but also on who would be party to an agreement.

Washington, D.C. — Today, for the second time, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) as a Dishonorable Mention in its Most Corrupt Members of Congress report. Rep. Schock is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for illegally soliciting a $25,000 donation to a super PAC, earning him a place in CREW’s report, an annual, bipartisan look at Washington’s worst. Rep. Schock was included as a Dishonorable Mention in CREW’s 2012 report for related matters.

‘I hadn’t heard of the sort of CIA or Gestapo tactics that were mentioned in the Guardian article until it was brought to my attention,’ Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin said in an interview outside Homan Square. ‘We are calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these allegations.’ Photograph: Chandler West for the Guardian

The US Department of Justice and embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel are under mounting pressure to investigate allegations of what one politician called “CIA or Gestapo tactics” at a secretive Chicago police facility exposed by the Guardian.

The December beating and robbery of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s son was tagged “confidential” by the city, which prevented the incident from appearing in the city’s vaunted crime “transparency” site. That’s the word from Tom Schenk Jr, the city’s chief data officer. CWB reported exclusively last week that the Emanuel robbery had gone missing from the city’s public Data Portal, even though the web site is a cornerstone of the city’s crime transparency efforts.

A total of 178 crimes were deemed “confidential” over the past eight years, Schenk said, adding that all of the crimes are now included in the Data Portal. Schenk had previously stated that 115 crimes were affected. The specially-categorized crimes should have been listed all along, he said.

Confidential Crimes?

Many questions beg to be asked and answered:

What exactly are the other 177 crimes that the city deemed to be “confidential” matters?

What qualifies a crime for “confidential” status?

Why is there a need for “confidential” crimes? What does that status mean?

Are there other categories of crimes that affect the Data Portal’s accuracy and government transparency?